Sunday, May 24, 2015

Pac Man Fever

You hit that Google audio file and you hear that theme music, you
automatically know what game you are about to play. In continuing a theme about
events that happened 35 years ago, Pac Man came out this month 35 years
ago. Pac Man still influences culture
today. There was a newer version of that
crappy cartoon, the internet is full of emulators and smart phones have the Pac
Man app. Even Budweiser used the game
for their Up for whatever campaign Super Bowl ad-

I know by placing this on line emulator there, some of you
are not going to read the rest of this blog post. For those of you pushing on, and if you are
of a certain age, you probably had Pac Man fever like I did in the 80’.s I am all about Salt Life now in my 40;s, but I was all about that Pac-Life in the 80;s. There were
many Saturday’s that I woke up on my Pac Man sheets, wearing my Pac- Man PJ’s, and ran downstairs
to pour a bowl of nasty Pac- Man cereal
and watch the original, wack-ass Pac- Man cartoon. I had Pac- Man Fever! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3n22GQMgcU

As for the game, Big
Hutch and I had the Atari 1600 game, The Atari 400 version, the held hand Pac
Man game…. All my Pac Man needs were covered… at home. Side brotha note… Pac Man fever was so bad, a
kid in my hood wanted to fight me when I didn’t let him play my hand held Pac
Man game. Like fight me fight me! He had
that fever, son!

The thing is, as much as I loved Pac- Man, I sucked at
playing the game. Like really sucked! For some of you younger brotha's, who may not know the Pac- Man levels, the game
starts you out at one level and continues on essentially just getting faster
each level up and becomes a test of speed, endurance, and your joy stick
skills. Level 1 is Cherry, Level 2 is Strawberry,
and level 3 is Orange

And it goes all the way up to a Key Level and it just begins
repeating the key level until you die or until you get to 255 Keys which is
some crazy, video game record/myth type shit and the game has a crazy kill screen at the end!

So back in the day,
there used to be these places called ‘arcades” where a young brotha could go,
take his quarters from collecting glass bottles and cans in the streets and
play video games. Now in the arcade, Pac
Man was always busy. Whether it was some
brotha playing the game and getting to
Key level(s) or crowds of brotha’s watching said brotha play the game . Side brotha note- the dude in our hood that
could play the hell out of some Pac Man was Jeff Hallett. Jeff was so good at Pac Man , we kinda marveled
at his ability to play. Jeff could
routinely get to Key

Levels on 1 quarter.
But I digress!

How come no brotha;s in this arcade?

So whenever I got my chance to play, I was nervous and was subsequently
eaten by ghosts maybe on Strawberry. Maybe. And I would subsequently get clowned by all
my friends for wasting my quarter to lose on Strawberry. So I did what any reasonable, 10 year old
would do, I cheated. Yep I bought the
Pac Man” Figure this shit out cheat book” that would teach you the pattern for Pac Man
to beat the game. I bought it for a
dollar at Wilkes Magazines and studied that shit like it was the SAT. The next time, I played Pac Man, not only was
I gonna pass strawberry- I was looking at like 5 or 10 key level, baby! I was
ready.

Except, I still sucked!
The patterns was all tricky and, not being that bright at 10, I could
not figure out which way to go all the time and then I got nervous with people
watching me, and then I got eaten. And then I got clowned. And then I just kinda faded away from Pac-Man. It’s not that I didn’t like the
game, or my PJ’s, or my sheets , or the cereal( well the cereal actually was
terrible), I just was never good at it.
Now I have the game on my Ps2 and the kids and I do Old School Gaming
night once a month. I’m still bad at
it! My son can make it to like Apple and
I’m still getting eaten by ghosts on Strawberry. It’s an embarrassment that I have dealt with
for 35 years and I just gotta accept… I love Pac Man but I suck at playing it!

-The Producer

Props to you if you finished and didn’t just stop and play
the simulator.